


The One and Only

by Dracorex



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, introspective, season 4 finale spoiler, this is an attempt at a beginning of an answer, why is Lucifer the only fallen angel we meet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracorex/pseuds/Dracorex
Summary: "Only a celestial could rule."Lucifer led a rebellion, but he stands alone.





	The One and Only

Blood spilt upon the steps of Heaven.

Civil war. Rebellion. A gamble that failed to pay off.

A foolish mistake.

It didn’t really matter what Lucifer thought of it, because everyone else had already made up their minds by the time they landed among the ashes.

“This is your fault!”

He had hit the one who had spoken, with enough force to send the other angel flying. That had been the cue for battle to break out, every bit as vicious as the one they had only just lost. Also much like that one, there were no winners in Hell.

By their reckoning, Lucifer did win this one. He didn’t feel that way.

They had been brothers and sisters, all of them. The blind, stupid ones, who carried out their Father’s will implacably, mercilessly, or reluctantly yet obediently, and the disillusioned ones, nearly as stupid, who had followed him into damnation. They still were his brothers and sisters. It didn’t feel that way, though. 

He was probably never going to see them again, the siblings who yet dwelled in the Silver City. He was a celestial being, he understood precisely what eternity meant. As for here, among grey stones and fiery heat…

Resentment was such a deadly poison. Lucifer could attest to that, from past personal experience. He saw it in their narrowed gazes as he passed by, and heard it in the acid tones of their voices even as they called him Lord and King. He felt it in their bitter acquiescence and the vindictiveness of their own ill-conceived attempts at rebellion in turn. It didn’t take long at all, for his siblings to become cold-eyed strangers to him.

Of course, there were other emotions at play too, each its own deadly toxin. Grief. Guilt. Rage. Loneliness. Desolation at what they had lost, and unfettered, reckless grasping for whatever they had left, pain and cruelty and sorrow, experienced or inflicted. He watched them change as it weighed upon them, wings withering and visages warping, heard them scream and cry in horror; looked in the mirror himself and saw burnt skin and burning eyes staring back, accusation and punishment both in one.

And yet, whenever he was given cause to lash out, he spread white wings that refused to be stained with soot, and slashed at them with perfect alabaster feathers.

Lucifer didn’t know why their Father would allow him to keep this. He didn’t know a great many things, and he only eventually discovered the answers to a few of his questions. Here was what he did come to understand:

Apparently, even banished and disgraced, he was still the Lightbringer.

His fellow exiled brothers and sisters hated and envied him for it. They were all of them particularly capable of ugly thoughts and unkind actions, these days, but where his temper balanced between white-hot rage and cold disdain, theirs seethed and sickened, a gnawing ache as bad as the hollow absence of God’s grace.

They weren’t the only prisoners of Hell, not by a long shot. There were demons, and there were mortal sinners, just as nasty and capricious in their own ways.

Frankly, Hell needed someone to straighten it out.

It might as well be Lucifer. He certainly wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it properly.

Being the Lord of Hell was a bloody thankless job, even if he was good at it: at enforcing his authority through fear and violence, at torturing those who deserved punishment, at hardening his heart in the face of the hurt he felt.

He’s shut more than one sibling into a cell of their own.

Millennia from now, he will be so sick of it all he abandons his duty.

Millennia from now, when demons threaten rebellion, he will choose to return, in order to protect those he loves.

Millennia from now, it will not occur to him to ask another angel to take up the empty throne in Hell.

After all, there isn’t anyone else, is there?


End file.
